TMNT

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—the words alone put a huge smile on my face and bring back fond memories of when my son was young. Now the four turtles, brothers Donatello (Mitchell Whitfield), Leonardo (James Arnold Taylor), Michelangelo (Mikey Kelley) and Raphael (Nolan North) are back and they're on a mission—to defend the world against an evil that was born 3,000 years ago. (Tricia Spears)

Special features include commentary by Writer/Director Kevin Munroe, commentary with English for the hearing impaired, an alternate opening to the movie, an alternate ending Temp/Scratch Test, the narrated Mikey's Birthday Party Full Sequence, the narrated Raphael's Rough House Flight Test, a Monsters Come Alive storyboard comparison, the two-minute featurette Donny's Digital Data Files, the storyboarded "Roof Top Workout" scene that was cut from the film, the Still Wanna Fight?! Temp/Scratch Test, an additional Splinter Gets Cake scene, the TMNT: Internet Reel trailer, the five-minute TMNT: Voice Talent First Look featurette featuring interviews with the talents of the film, and up-front ads.

The anamorphically enhanced 2.37:1 animated DVD will show good resolution, but compression artifacts can make a mess of many scenes, which is a shame because the picture shows real promise at times. Black levels and shading in the shadows are well rendered, which can help provide good depth of field to the imagery. The color scheme is rather limited for an animated title, but the colors that are used can be bold and nicely saturated. Edge enhancement is minor, but can be a distraction at times. The VC-1-encoded Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD both take all the good from the DVD and expand it with even better color balance and better shadow delineation, not to mention the almost complete lack of compression artifacts. Color banding can be seen at times, but otherwise both versions look fantastic. (Danny Richelieu)

The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack can be exciting, with good phantom imaging across the front and rear stages. For much of the presentation, though, the surround channels are not used aggressively, which can give the soundtrack a very dimensionless feel. Luckily, these moments aren't frequent, and the majority of the soundtrack sounds naturally expansive. The LFE channel is incorporated well when needed, and overall fidelity is pure. This soundtrack should keep the movie's target audience entertained. The Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD both include a lossless Dolby TrueHD encoding, which provides noticeably improved fidelity with more fluidity and better articulation. This is especially noticeable in deep bass, which becomes much tighter and better controlled. While the Dolby Digital encoding is enjoyable, the TrueHD encodings are superb. The Blu-ray Disc also includes a Dolby Digital encoding that sounds a lot like the DVD, and the HD DVD provides a Dolby Digital Plus encoding that gives a slight improvement in fidelity over the Dolby Digital encoding, but it is subtle. (Danny Richelieu)